Feinberg’s adjustment like a backhanded compliment…

"So what I'm saying is I can't, simply cannot tell a lie and oh, damn..."

Feinberg’s helping again…

He took a look at the poor harvest this season of shrimp and crab from the Gulf of Mexico and decided something needed to be done, that more compensation was necessary as the damages from this oil spill were greater than he had originally estimated…

And he was right in this assessment, and to fix it he will increase the compensation rates for shrimpers and crabbers to four times the amount of their losses in 2010. Great! Wonderful! Certainly a responsible move and I, who have criticized Ken all this time, let me be the first to say perhaps I was wrong, wrong about him being inflexible, maybe even wrong about…er, what?

What do you mean it only applies to those who haven’t accepted a final payment yet?

Well, that doesn’t make any sense…

It’s not like those who’ve already been compensated are any less damaged, that they don’t also need this payment adjustment… I mean, they’re fishing the same waters, they’re experiencing the same depleted catches, the horrible market prices, the questions about their future…

“Feinberg…said he is unwilling to reopen claims or change the terms of already signed releases…”

Oh for fuck’s sake…

Okay, so to those estimated 1000 shrimpers and crabbers who have yet to accept a final offer?

Congratulations.

But to those 4000 claimants who have already accepted final payment from the GCCF, receiving half of what Feinberg’s now paying to people in their same situation?

Tough shit.

I guess you shouldn’t have listened to him first time around…Yeah, when he told you the final payment offer he sent you was all you were going to get? Not true…or in other words, a lie. When you applied for your interim payment, and along with the interim offer, he sent you a final payment offer for shits and giggles, suggesting that offer was as good as it was going to get?

A lie.

When he spoke aloud to the press, suggesting that claimants should just move on with their lives, and in the near future he might see fit to decrease the amount of his final payment offers?

A lie.

When he said the Gulf was rapidly improving, that all would be well by 2013?

Another lie, or…wait a minute, maybe Ken was just wrong? Interesting. Okay…so Ken is either a liar or he’s wrong. Well then, here would appear to be the choices:

If Ken is in fact a liar and a fraud, then he will remain so unless he agrees to retroactively pay the 4000 people who make their living from shrimp and crab, who unfortunately took him at his word when he made them a final offer and now are cheated out of half what they would’ve been paid had they not.

Or…

Ken isn’t a liar and a fraud, he was just wrong about the science, that same science he based his entire methodology around, and if that’s the case, then not only should he still retroactively pay those 4000 claimants, but he needs to revisit his entire methodology and see who else might have been screwed by his poor environmental estimations…other fishermen, in fact…maybe the entire 300,000 plus claimants he just flat out denied in the first place, review their claims too just to make sure…

Course, if he doesn’t want to go to that kind of trouble, he can just admit he’s a liar who is currently cheating 4000 people out of their fair due, and assuming this is his preferable option, how is cheating people right, moral, ethical or fair at all?

It’s not.

It’s help at a late date for a few and a backhanded slap for the many, hardly complimentary.

The GCCF and Ken Feinberg have never been about doing the right thing, and this latest move is just one more demonstration…or in other words…hey, when is that federal audit supposed to happen again?